In this sample chapter, learn what main module services and extensions are available for the Python programming language. Author Andre Lessa expands your knowledge by introducing the most commonly used modules, listing some examples, and introducing the practical side of several modules' utilization.

This chapter is excerpted from Python Developer’s Handbook.

All right, it's a fair cop, but society is to blame.

This chapter shows what main module services and extensions are currently
available for the Python programming language. The focus here is to expand your
knowledge by introducing the most used modules and listing some examples for
you.

Python Libraries

The first chapter has given you a good introduction about the Python core
language. Everything you have successfully learned will be applied from now on.
All the topics covered in the previous chapters are the building blocks for your
Python mastering.

Now we will concentrate on this chapter. Python's standard distribution
is shipped with a rich set of libraries. These libraries intend to offer
flexibility to the programmers.

The libraries (also known as modules) cover many topics, such as the
following:

Python core services—A group of modules, such as sys
and os, that enable you to interact with what is behind the
interpreter.

Network and Internet services—Python has modules for almost
everything that is Internet related. You have many network client protocol
implementations that handle the most used Internet services, such as HTTP and
FTP. Python also provides support for parsing mark-up languages, like XML and
HTML.

Regular expressions—The re module is a very
comprehensive choice for text manipulation because it provides Perl 5 style
patterns and matching rules.

These are just some of the features
implemented by the modules that are reviewed by this chapter.

The Library Reference

The robustness of Python's library is something amazing. Many users have
contributed to the development of these modules during the last few years.

Some modules were written in C and are built into the interpreter. Others are
written in Python and can be loaded by using the import command.

Keep in mind that some of the interfaces may change slightly (for instance,
bug fixes) with the next release. Therefore, I suggest that you visit
Python's Web site once in a while, and keep yourself up-to-date. You can
always browse the latest version of the Python Library Reference at

I encourage you to use this chapter in order to get a quick overview about
the existing Python libraries. After you have exhausted all the material
provided by this book, check out the online Python Library Reference to see the
minor details about each one of these Python module interfaces.

This chapter introduces you to the practical side of several modules'
utilization. The next pages show what main functions each module exposes, and,
whenever possible, some examples are listed.

Some of the modules—such as debugger(pdb), profiler,
Tkinter (the standard Python GUI API) and re—aren't
deeply studied here because they are presented in detail in other chapters of
this book. Whenever this happens, the chapter number is mentioned next to the
module name.

The Standard Library of Modules

This book covers the latest version of the Standard Library of Modules that
is available at the time of this writing. The modules are presented in the same
order as they are shown in Python's official documentation. This was done
to make the work of cross-referencing easier for you.

The following topics are the group names that organize the modules you will
find.